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Mitigation planning for accidental releases of pollutants in marine systems necessitates the ability to predict the temporal and spatial fate of the contaminant. That requires understanding of the meteorological driving forces, the resulting hydrodynamic velocities field and wave climate, and the physicochemical processes affecting the advection, diffusion and decay rate of the contaminant substance. All of the above are very complex phenomena that require the use of computer models. This paper describes the application of a hydrodynamic geophysical model and two pollutant transport models for the simulation of a point-source contaminant release. The applications involve an open sea system as in Thermaikos Gulf, Greece and an enclosed water system as in Lake Okeechobee. The hydrodynamic and one of the transport models are using a deterministic Eulerian approach while the second transport model is based on a stochastic particle-tracking Lagrangian framework. The deterministic models are using explicit finite differences discretization schemes. All of the models are written in MATLAB for wide accessibility and easy graphic representation of the results. |